Blogging Tips

Forget Everything Your Heard About Links, Ad Clicks, Etc., Bring the HUMAN Element to Your Blog Pages and You Will Succeed

So you’re a fairly new blog owner who is scratching his/her head wondering why you’re only getting 50 to 100 web visitors per day to your blog. You’ve tried what all the “web gurus” out there told you to do: Link up with like-minded sites! Put an ad for your site on another similar site and you will get hundreds of click-throughs every day! Somehow it’s just not working.

Let’s say you are getting 75 visitors per day for your site, but only about 10% of those visitors come back for another visit. Having those seven or eight returning visitors finding new content that is refreshed on a regular basis with dramatic and relevant content would go a long way in making sure they bookmark your site permanently. Putting in content that returns real humanistic value to the web surfer to your site would ensure that he/she would tell all their friends about your site, thus starting a huge word-of-mouth buzz around the Internet. Let’s examine ALL the ways to bring this more human element to your site.

1. Write content for your blog site that appeals to all web visitors, not just the ones you are targeting.

Try bringing in content to your blog writings or site content that focuses on solving problems for everybody, not just people who love video games, if that’s what your site is all about. Even video game lovers go outside once in a while, so why not have content that appeals to their need to find bargains on used cars, computer equipment, bedroom furniture, or anything else that people always seem to have a need for.

Also, general news updates about topics such as entertainment and politics always keeps people coming back. You will see a dramatic increase in web clicks after you expand your content parameters to cover the entire “mainstream public”, not just the ones you designed your site to attract.

2. Treat your visitors like they are your best friends.

Everybody likes to feel special, and the people that just happen to stumble onto your site are no different. Even though they had no real interest in your site before, if you have content that caters to everybody’s basic human needs, they will come back for more. As the site owner, you need to open up to your visitors and tell them about who you are and why you started the site. Give them a personal mission statement about how your site will help fulfill their needs in specific, but personal terms.

3. Don’t focus on getting every nickel and dime out of your customers.

I know you’re not in the website business for your health, but there are other ways to generate income without hitting your visitors over the head with every cheap marketing trick out there. Keep your pop-up ads to a minimum so the pages don’t have loading time problems, and make sure any ads you do have on your site are legitimate and relevant to your site content. In other words, if your site content is focused on Japanese anime, don’t have an adlink for Starbucks Coffee directly by a nice animated clip from Osamu Tezuka. That only distracts viewers from the beauty of the Tezuka clip.

4. Create content that you love to write about.

This has been said many times before, but it cannot ever be over-estimated in relevance to your own site content.
If you don’t have any passion for the products/content on your own website, how will anybody else? Even if you happen to have a passion for left wing politics in the Netherlands, and you don’t think anybody else does, write about it and find out! You would be surprised at the number of visitors who will return to your site after they find a like-minded person who feels pot should be legalized in America just like it is in Amsterdam.

They will be curious as to other opinions your website will espouse based on your political leanings. Before you know it, you’ll have hit 1000 hits per hour just because of the passion and substance included in your blog. Don’t be afraid to share your true views of anything at anytime. Owners of political sites have seen their visitors skyrocket after taking controversial stances on topics like religion, abortion and gun control. As long as you are honest about your stance, visitors will respect that and keep coming back for more even if they don’t share your beliefs on every topic.

5. If you’ve had traumatic personal experiences in your life, tell us about it!

It boggles my mind how many blog owners keep the bad experiences in their life all to themselves. There is absolutely nobody reading this right now that doesn’t gobble up somebody else’s horrific experiences with lawsuits, bad mothers-in-law, car breakdowns, victimization by violent crime, etc. Just because a subject can be morbid, or a complete downer, does not mean that somebody who has had a similar experience never wants to hear about it again. On the contrary, it’s the exact opposite! The expression “Misery loves company” means exactly that.

People like to hear that other human beings are suffering right along with them, so pull out that bad experience you had dealing with a death of a loved one, or write about that time you heard a burglar in your house, and had to fight him off at gun point. No matter what kind of bad experience you’ve had in your background, reading about your real-life trauma will really interest all your web visitors, even the lucky ones who never have seen the troubles you’ve seen.

I will continue this discussion on my next posting which should be up next Monday morning. I will finish this up with a more detailed look at five more ways to bring in visitors to your site that will stay around for years to come, and not just viewers who read one blog post and leave within five minutes. So stay tuned.